


Anna vs. Her Enemies

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mentions of Chuck/Sarah, Mentions of Past Anna/Morgan, Red Test, Spy Anna, morally gray
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 11:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1224997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anna is recruited to be a spy, and it turns out she's really good at it.  But it has its ups and downs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anna vs. Her Enemies

You’re in Hawaii, looking for jobs you don’t want and won’t get, stopping often at coffeeshops where you sip your latte very, very slowly, so you have a reason not to go home.

At home, your boyfriend is definitely playing videogames. He no longer dreams of being a sushi chef, and you wonder if he resents you for pushing him to go chase his dreams in the first place. He misses home, his friends (especially his best friend, the one he loves in ways he could never love you). 

He wants out of this relationship as much as you do, but both of you are an ocean away from everyone you know, so you’re stuck with each other.

And then two men in suits approach you and make you an offer. Your instincts tell you that these are dangerous men, but also tell you that they might, despite all odds, be telling the truth.

They want you to be a spy.

It’s the craziest fucking thing you’ve ever heard, but you sure as hell don’t have anything else going on.

You make your excuses and pack your things. Even if this turns out to be a disaster, at least it would be a change.

\--

You do well at training, better than most of the other “recruits,” with top-5 rankings in hand-to-hand, tech, languages, and general tactics, and (barely) passable work in deception. Everyone keeps telling you that things won’t be so cut and dry in the field, and you wonder if they’re sexist dicks or if there’s just something about you that screams ‘clueless girl from Burbank who has no business being here.’ 

The dorm you stay in has mice, so you report it to housekeeping repeatedly. You’re good at catching mice, but if someone sees you luring a mouse into a cup and running to set it free and unharmed outside, they will definitely think you’re not spy material. 

You graduate from training and have never been so terrified or so excited in your life. You wonder why, before this moment, it never occurred to you that you might do something important.

\--

Your first few missions don’t make you feel important at all. Mostly, you are surveilling people that are not doing anything interesting. You’re told that this is standard rookie fare, but it still sucks.

Some of your handlers like you, some of them don’t. You learn not to take it personally.

Eventually, you work your way up, by proving yourself and possibly by making people sick of hearing your sarcastic critiques of how useless and boring your early missions are.

You attend an embassy gala and manage to sneak out with a jump drive full of secrets. 

You break into a company’s headquarters, where they are selling secrets to an enemy.

You seduce an arms dealers’ accountant and use him to leverage the fall of a minor criminal empire.

You think you are really damn good at this job.

\--

Someone tells you about the Red Test, and you think you should probably quit. 

They say that your handler for this job will be someone high up at the NSA, that nobody knows why he’s taken an interest in this minor event, but he’s coming so be ready to impress. 

Big shots are almost always assholes, so you aren’t looking forward to it.

You aren’t sure what’s going to happen, so you stash a go bag on the outskirts of the city, just in case you decide that you can’t kill someone and you need to go on the run from your own government. 

The day of the test, you meet the big shot. It’s that guy who used to work at Buy More and would sell a lot of barbecues and grunt a lot.

You don’t know what you did to impress the man, but it suddenly makes a lot more sense that those guys in suits randomly picked you out in Hawaii.

He doesn’t tell you what he was doing at the Buy More (when does anyone tell anyone anything?). But he goes through the logistics of the Red Test, the contingency plans, all of it, making sure you feel confident in every step of the plan.

“What did he do?” you ask, even though you know you’re not supposed to ask. Part of the test is that you trust, without question, when they tell you someone has to die. You think that not being given the answers might be the worst part (until you remember the part where you have to kill someone).

John pauses and shakes his head, and you’re not surprised he doesn’t answer. He’s kind about it, rather than cold or judgmental, which doesn’t seem like a big shot, and you wonder why he’s like this, why he has compassion for a dumbass girl who is in way over her head.

You say, “I don’t suppose this is one of those tests where you get to copy off the kid next to you?”

John flinches for a second, and you’re not sure why, but he shakes his head and gives your bad joke a little smile.

Right before you head out, he tells you, quietly, “You know, this is your choice. You can do this. You’re brave enough, and you sure as hell have the skills. But if you choose not to, I’ll make sure you get a good analyst position. If you decide the field isn’t right for you, there’s no shame in that.”

You stare at him for a moment. You observe, “You don’t really believe that.”

He says nothing.

You ask, “Why are you doing this? Because you feel responsible for me?”

He sighs. “No. Because it’s a tough transition, and you’ve made it fast. I wanted to make sure you didn’t have to take this last step alone.”

You see the hedge in it; you wonder what softened John’s heart, because he couldn’t have risen the ranks with this fuzzy, blurry heart.

You don’t have time to figure it out. You nod and head out the door.

Ten minutes later, you come back. You feel like the air is made of lead, like your lungs are twisted in knots.

“Good work,” he says, not smiling. He gives you a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

“Don’t tell anyone in Burbank what I am,” you say for some reason. 

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

\--

For the first time, you look up what your old friends are doing. You use an untraceable computer connection and you don’t make contact, but you look at what they’ve been up to.

You’re not remotely surprised that Morgan went back to California.

You’re also not surprised that Jeff and Lester seem exactly the same. 

You see that Chuck and Sarah are engaged and you smile. They’re the perfect couple, and you’re happy for them. 

You’ve always liked Chuck – but then, everyone likes Chuck. And you always thought Sarah was really nice and really cool.

There was a time when you really cared about her friendship. Your whole life, everyone has told you ‘You’re so smart and so pretty, don’t you want to do more with your life than work at Buy More and hang out aimlessly with your strange friends?’ And then you see Sarah, happily bumming around the Wienerlicious, and it feels like you’re not alone. Because when you’re 23 and everything sucks, then aimless sounds pretty damn good.

You think back to when you would hang out with friends, when you would listen to music or go out to Subway after work or play pranks. You think about how different you were then.

You remember suddenly the way John would always be exchanging looks with Sarah, and you feel like an idiot for not realizing that Sarah was a spy. 

You wonder then if Chuck is a spy too; all evidence suggests yes. But then you can’t really imagine Chuck passing a Red Test, so you decide that it doesn’t really matter either way.

\--

You gain more experience. Intel gathering gets easier, and you take on more and more challenging missions.

Some go well. Some don’t.

Once, you end up spending 4 weeks locked in a hole, sharing the cell with rats, desperately trying to convince your captors you’re just a tourist who wandered into the wrong side of town. Eventually, you manage to pry some wood off the rotting walls, sharpen it, and stab a guard to escape.

They give you a medal and week’s vacation, and mandatory therapy for two weeks.

They send you on more missions, they ask you to work with teams. After seventeen team missions, they give you lead on a mission. You’re the youngest on the team, but they’re willing to give you a try, so you run with it.

You run with every opportunity they give you.

Soon enough, risking your life seems like just another day on the job.

Killing never gets easier, but you do it anyway.

When you visit your parents, you tell them that you are an American marketing consultant for an international fashion company. Your mother looks at your blouse like she thinks it’s ugly, says nothing, and it feels like those four weeks in the hole.

\--

You are working a job in Paris when you walk by a parfumerie and you realize that you could afford the perfume you always used to dream about, the ridiculously expensive one that you used to read about. When you worked at Buy More, you would sometimes go to the one department store in Los Angeles that carried it and ask to sample a spray, just so you could wear it for one day (until they got wise, that is).

You don’t make that much, but you hardly have any expenses, and you could afford it now. But the scent is too distinctive, and so you couldn’t wear it on missions because so few people sell it that it could be traced. 

And when are you not on missions?

You walk away from the parfumerie window and don’t even ask for a sample.

\--

You keep going on missions. 

You learn the gamut of things that motivate a spy.

You learn sacrifice for the greater good. You learn anger at a lost team member. You learn to destroy the enemy out of vengeance. You learn to destroy the enemy in order to prove to your superiors that you’re capable of more than just vengeance. 

You learn to do it when it’s the right thing to do, when it’s the wrong thing to do, when you’re pretty sure than no one even knows what to do.

You move up. The old you would have mocked you for caring so much at each promotion, for giving a damn that some bureaucracy thinks you’re good at doing what you’re told. 

You try not to give a shit what the old you would have thought, but you can’t quite do it.

Years later, you are at a debrief in D.C., and you run into John Casey again, who has been brought in as a private consultant on a case that relates to something Casey handled years ago. By now, you are cleared highly enough that you know for sure about Chuck and Sarah, and you know that Casey is working with them still.

You gently make fun of him for being a well-paid private industry hire (nothing John didn’t do to plenty of others, from what you’ve heard.) He smiles and gripes about how new recruits have it so easy compared to when he was a kid.

When it’s almost time that you have to leave, you ask him, “Why did you see me personally? That time?”

He hesitates. “Chuck didn’t want me to recruit you.”

“He didn’t think I’d be a good spy?”

“He wanted to protect you from this world. He said that you were too good a person,” John says. There’s something in his voice, not guilt, but something. “Do you regret that I didn’t listen to him?”

You pause. “I never really felt like my life had purpose until I got this job,” you tell him.

It’s the truth, but it’s also not quite a ‘yes,’ and you know John’s smart enough to realize it. But he answers with a nod, and you shake his hand and walk away.

You go to your next briefing, but the words fall, blank and dusty, and you don’t hear a thing.


End file.
